Sonic Highway Foo Fighters

TV Shows

How to Get Away with Murder

From the moment How to Get Away with Murder premiered, it was a success. The show features Oscar winning actress Viola Davis (The Help) as the terrifyingly brilliant law professor Annalise Keating, Alfred Enoch (Harry Potter) as a previously waitlisted law student Wes, and several others who help complete the plot. The episodes generally start with a glimpse into the future with the Professor Keating’s students disposing of a body and trying to figure how to like the title implies, get away with murder. As the series continues more more questions are answered regarding the murder, and it can be assumed that all the details revolving around the murder will be answered in the season’s finale. The rest of the 60 minute episode is divided into two plots; one revolving around the current case Annalise is representing and the students competing to gain her approval, the other plot revolves around the mysterious murder of a student at the college and Annalise’s husband, psychology professor Sam Keating, (Tom Verica). Although the plot of this show sounds rather complicated, it is actually very easy to follow and the suspense of the show keeps the viewers from getting bored. This show also features many things that make it somewhat unique to TV, including several biracial couples, and losing court cases that just strengthen Davis’s character. Many popular shows like Scandal and The Good Wife, share components with How to Get Away with Murder so popularity of the show is no big surprise. The only problems with this show is that the plot revolving the court cases can get a bit predictable, and there might be difficulties when it comes to expanding the show into multiple series. However that is in the future, and currently How to Get Away with Murder is one of the best series on television. How to Get Away With Murder episodes air Thursday at 10/9c on ABC (photo of abc.com)

Utopia

Adapted from a Dutch format whose popularity no doubt helped sell Fox on the concept, the goal was clearly to up the ante on “Big Brother” and “Survivor” with the extended timeframe, lack of silly games or challenges, portentous narration (“A chance to start the world again”), and the purity of knowing there’s no cash prize at the end of the rainbow (other than perhaps an US Weekly spread).OK, so there is a rough template – one of the 15 participants will be ejected, and replaced, each month – but the goal is to make this feel like it’s somehow Important, a commentary on our riven and polarized times.Nice try, except the casting mavens have loaded up on extremes – folks with whom a lot of people wouldn’t want to share an elevator ride, much less a log cabin, even if it’s freeway-close to Los Angeles.As a consequence, the crazy train made several stops before the first hour was up, from an emotional outburst by the ex-convict to the survivalist prepper’s blather about waste to discovering that one of the women is secretly pregnant. And that didn’t even count Josh, the 36-year-old contractor who got drunk and became abusive on night one.In pursuing this unwieldy, sure-to-be-fractious cross-section of Americans, “Utopia” has bent the mold in some respects. The initial roster includes several players in their 40s and even incorporates a few – such as Jonathan, a 44-year-old Pentecostal pastor – whose efforts to proselytize raise the potentially thorny issue of religion.Fox launched the show with a two-hour episode in advance of its Tuesday and Friday telecasts, and “Utopia” has certainly generated plenty of curiosity, mostly because the reality genre has appeared to be stuck in such a rut.Yet while raw and weird have certainly yielded dividends in the past, please let’s not kid ourselves: If “Utopia” has any legs at all, it will as a cable-style freakshow, not some grand “experiment” in democracy. Indeed, the diverse lineup seems designed to draw from various unscripted staples – a dash of “Doomsday Preppers” here, a dollop of “Duck Dynasty” there – and throw them together in the same blender.

September 7th 8/7c Fox

Red Band Society

Review by Isabel Richter Red Band Society is a classic coming of age story; however this one has a twist, it takes place in a hospital. Emma (Ciara Bravo), the overachiever, has Anorexia, Dash (Astro), the bad boy, has Cystic Fibrosis, Charlie (Griffin Gluck) who serves as the series narrator, is in a coma, Kara (Zoe Levin) the mean one, has an enlarged heart that’s failing, Leo (Charlie Rowe) the leader, has Osteosarcoma and is in chemo, as does Jordi (Nolan Sotillo), the newbie. Under normal circumstances, this group of teenagers wouldn’t be friends, but as they are not in normal circumstances. This show is cheesy as heck with lines like, “Your body isn’t your soul, your soul is you and they can never cut into that” and “Life is full of black holes,”; but just because its cheesy doesn’t mean it isn’t any good. The pilot showed promise and it leaves lots of room for the storylines created to develop, such as the Jordi, Emma, Leo love triangle, Kara’s heart condition, and Charlie’s history and if he will ever wake up. It will be interesting to see where the creators take it, however if it has the ability to be long term is questionable. Overall it is an original satire and a good way to kill an hour of a Wednesday evening.

Wednesday September 17th 9/8c Fox (photo credit Wikipedia.com)

Music

Sonic Highways: Foo Fighters

Review by: Mattie CollinsOn November 10, 2014 the American rock band released their newest album "Sonic Highways". This was a collaboration with HBO's show Sonic Highways produced by David Grohl. Sonic Highways was a milestone for band Foo fighters in being their 8th album and 20 years in the music industry. The album has a set list with a twist of a back story. Producers of the show planed to have the show set in following cities; The cities will be Chicago, Austin, Nashville, Los Angeles, Seattle, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and New York. With all these cities it made it almost inevitable for the name of this new release to be "Sonic Highways".http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_Fighters:_Sonic_Highways

1989 Taylor Swift

review by: Deeanna Whitt

Taylor Swift's new album "1989" was very different than anything she has ever done before. I feel like this album has been a big step forward for Taylor Swift. This album sounds more mature and grown up than her older albums. Instead of focusing on breakup's in all of her songs, she really stepped outside of the box. Also a few of her songs, "Shake it Off" and "Welcome to New York", didn't have anything to do with love. In the love song "Wonderland" she very cleverly references Alice in Wonderland, and the song "Style" is all about her relationship with Harry Styles. She has really impressed me with this album and I can't wait to see what she has for us in the future.

I Don't Dance

review by: Deeanna Witt (photo from http://www.countryweekly.com) Lee Brice's newest album, I don't dance has a good variety of songs. There are songs everywhere from slow love to rock. I think, personally, that the songs were not very country; most of them were upbeat and more on the rock side. Almost all the songs were based off of love, or ex-love, the rest are about drinking; like "Drinking Class" and "Whiskey Used to Burn". A couple songs like "Hard to Figure Out" and "I don't Dance", are very meaningful, although most are not. A few of his songs like "Sirens" didn't really make a lot of sense, they were just there for amusement. All in all the songs were very good and flowed together.

V by Maroon 5

review by: Madeline Lonas

I really like the music style of Maroon 5's fifth album 'V'. This is truly a 5 Star album. Who doesn't love Adam Levine? Exactly, no one. I listened to this album five times. You gotta be five to not understand what Adam Levine is trying convene. My favorite song in the album, by far, has to be the fifth song, Sugar. That's my favorite song 5 times over. I think Maroon 5 is five times the band they were five years ago.

Movies

Maze Runner

review by: Reagan Forbes

The Maze Runner was an outstanding movie with a thought provoking plot and great action scenes that kept everyone on the edge of their seat. Thomas' character arrives in the maze confused like everyone else at first. However, soon after he arrives things start changing. People survive a night in the maze, their leader gets injured, and even a girl called Teresea (played by Kaya Scodelario). For the first time, they start questioning how they got there, and how to get out. Overall, The Maze Runner is an amazing movie filled with excitement.

Movie Reviews

If I Stay

review by: Isabel Richter

For those who don’t know, If I Stay is a film directed by R.J. Culter. If I Stay, is about Mia Hall, a 17 year old cello prodigy, whose biggest problem is deciding whether to attend Juilliard in NYC, or stay with her family and boyfriend back in Portland Oregon. However, Mia and her family are involved in a terrible head-on car crash, that kills her entire family and leaves Mia in a out of body experience, where she must decide if she should go and be with her family or stay with her remaining family and continue life. I went to see the film the day after it came out. I read the book and its sequel Where She Went, earlier this year and I loved it. I was happily disappointed to learn that they were adapting it, movies always never as good as the book, but If I Stay came pretty darn close. The cast is full of chemistry, it seems that the film is more of a documentary, rather than a piece of fiction, and it seems as if Gayle Forman, the author, was thinking about those particular actors and actress when she wrote the novel. The film is primarily told through flashbacks that help Mia decide if she wants to stay with her remaining friends and The character of Mia Hall is played by the phenomenal Chloe Grace Mortez (Carrie). Mortez, who actually learned to play the cello for the film, brings such life to Mia. As opposed to many chick-films, Mia isn’t perfect, she’s socially awkward, she feels like a black sheep everywhere she goes, and like an alien in her own family, she gets overly emotional and worries what others think of her, and Mortez plays her so perfectly, and the character of Mia is very relatable. Adam Wilde, Mia’s rocker boyfriend is played by newcomer Jamie Blackley, (who despite being british, totally pulls off a american accent), is someone, who as a viewer, I had a love/hate relationship, he and his band are starting to pick up popularity, and this strains the relationship, his and Mia’s relationship is not by any means perfect, but in the book it was better, the movies portrayed him more as a bad guy, and that was probably the only this I didn’t like. Her parents are played by the amazing Mireille Enos, (World War Z), and Joshua Lenard, (The Blair Witch Project), these are the parents you want, Denny Hall is a former punk rocker turned high school teacher, and Kat Hall is a former groupie turned supermom to two kids, keeping the wardrobe. See in the book we find out early on that both are dead on arrival, but in the film, Denny’s death isn’t revealed till later and it almost seems that he’s fine, till Mia hears the Doctors discussing the fact that when she wakes up she’ll be an orphan; if she wakes up that is. If watching the montage of scenes with Mia and her happy parents after their death is revealed isn’t bad enough, finding out that Teddy, (Jakob Davis) Mia’s adorable little brother, who Mia is closest to, and the reason that Mia has stayed this long has died. For the majority of the film, Teddy is okay and it totally looks like hes going to be fine, and even though I read the book and he died, I semi-convinced myself that in the film he was going to be fine. Unfortunately, I was wrong, and that was a emotional doozy. The entire film was amazing, and I am planning on adding to my collection as soon as possible. I’m not to spoil what Mia decides in the end but unlike alot of chick flicks this one isn’t predictable. If I stay is one of those films that can change your outlook on life, and even if you look at the trailer and say “oh this is going to be such a bad chick flick,” I recommend that you don't just pass it by and to watch it, just remember the tissues.(photo moviepilot.com)